She's been working with the Indian Government to support women in agriculture and in 2012 she toured the country as part of a delegation looking at potential trade and investment opportunities.

"My sense is that they're not yet wanting to import lots of food from us but what they're particularly interested in is the things that we're really good at doing, like how you manage drought, the great research we've done on climate change, what we do about water," Ms McGowan said.

"So their need for research and some of the technical expertise that we've developed in Australia is just huge....And it's in some of the fantastic work the Co-operative Research Centres have been doing in agriculture."

This week the CSIRO confirmed that agricultural research jobs are among those next to go at the premier science organisation.

The Government is adding an extra $400 million to the science and technology budget with five new 'growth centres' to encourage interaction between science and industry in areas like mining and food manufacturing.

But Ms McGowan is concerned that Australia might struggle to meet demand for agricultural research services if a deal with India is finalised, and she's worried that Australia risks losing some of its top researchers.

"It's a brain drain in a way. These people who have been working at these CRC's could easily get work in India," she said.

"But I also hope this is just a dip in Australia's approach to agricultural research. That very very soon we will absolutely see the importance of much larger investment into agricultural research.

"If we're going to keep ahead of countries like India and countries like China, we need to invest in agricultural research."

Two-way trade of goods and services between Australia and India was worth $15 billion last year, down from a peak of $22 billion four years ago.

India is already a large food producer and Ms McGowan points out that many states are proudly self-sufficient.

But the population of 1.2 billion is growing and she claims India needs to increase its own food production.

"When we were over there in 2012 we went to a marketing seminar put on by Austrade up in the Punjab where they were looking at building larger dairies with thousands of cows," she said.

"And that could be an area where Australia could really value-add because we've got a lot of expertise in Australia of running really large scale dairies with 3000 to 4000 cows."

In 2009, Australia's main food and fibre exports to India were wool, chick peas and almonds and the main imports from India were tea, rice, leather, cashew nuts and tobacco.

Former Austrade chief economist and the John Neville Fellow in Economics at the University of New South Wales, Tim Harcourt, agrees that skills and services would be a significant part of a trade deal, but he stresses that the potential for food exports shouldn't be underestimated.

"It's going to prove that India and Australia are more than just cricket, curry and Commonwealth," Mr Harcourt said.

"Areas like berries, blueberries, strawberries, apples, mangoes and peaches and vegies like broccoli and so on, there is excessive demand.

"The states do a reasonable job in some areas of India but there's still a capacity issue and it's probably a lot more open economy than it used to be.

He believes India would also be looking to export its own agricultural commodities such as mangoes, rice and some grains.

"I think with beef and dairy they're mainly looking at their domestic market," he said.

"But they're principally interested in investments in agriculture. They've been investing in Australian agriculture under the radar, mainly because they don't have the state-owned enterprises that China has."

Supporting Women in Ag

Cathy McGowan hopes Indian women wanting to pursue their own careers in agriculture could also benefit from a trade deal between the two countries.

"When we were working with India there was a great divide and almost by definition, a woman can't be a farmer because the definition of a farmer is a person who owns land, and in India there's a whole lot of rules governing land ownership and it was very very rare for women to own land," she explained.

"So our work was to talk with the Indian Government about why it's important for women to be educated in agriculture and agricultural business and explain that they could increase agriculutral production by almost six per cent."